The Stella plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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84° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 83° in 1941.
Stella’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Point, about 1,330 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 24 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Stella reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Indian Creek, Indian Creek, the Elk River, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,180 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stella; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stella has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Stella normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 2.53 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Neosho, 12 miles northwest, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
